The Songs of the Lathes

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1. In Flanders Field In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below. We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved and were loved, and now we lie, In […]...
2. Flanders FLANDERS, the name of a place, a country of people, Spells itself with letters, is written in books. “Where is Flanders?” was asked one time, Flanders known only to those who lived there And milked cows and made cheese and spoke the home language. “Where is Flanders?” was asked. And the slang adepts shot the […]...
3. Long Guns THEN came, Oscar, the time of the guns. And there was no land for a man, no land for a country, Unless guns sprang up And spoke their language. The how of running the world was all in guns. The law of a God keeping sea and land apart, The law of a child sucking […]...
4. A Radio With Guts it was on the 2nd floor on Coronado Street I used to get drunk And throw the radio through the window While it was playing, and, of course, It would break the glass in the window And the radio would sit there on the roof Still playing And I’d tell my woman, “Ah, what a […]...
5. SONGS SONGS are like painted window-panes! In darkness wrapp’d the church remains, If from the market-place we view it; Thus sees the ignoramus through it. No wonder that he deems it tame, And all his life ’twill be the same. But let us now inside repair, And greet the holy Chapel there! At once the whole […]...
6. Screw-Guns Smokin’ my pipe on the mountings, sniffin’ the mornin’ cool, I walks in my old brown gaiters along o’ my old brown mule, With seventy gunners be’ind me, an’ never a beggar forgets It’s only the pick of the Army that handles the dear little pets ‘Tss! ‘Tss! For you all love the screw-guns the […]...
7. Songs Dawn coming in over the fields Of darkness takes me by surprise And I look up from my solitary road Pleased not to be alone, the birds Now choiring from the orange groves Huddling to the low hills. But sorry That this night has ended, a night In which you spoke of how little love […]...
8. THREE SONGS FOR MAYDAY MORNING ( I ) For ‘JC’ of the TLS Nightmare of metropolitan amalgam Grand Hotel and myself as a guest there Lost with my room rifled, my belongings scattered, Purse, diary and vital list of numbers gone – Vague sad memories of mam n’dad Leeds 1942 back-to-back with shared outside lav. Hosannas of sweet May mornings […]...
9. Many Inventions ‘Less you want your toes trod of you’d better get back at once, For the bullocks are walking two by two, The byles are walking two by two, And the elephants bring the guns. Ho! Yuss! Great-big-long-black-forty-pounder guns. Jiggery-jolty to and fro, Each as big as a launch in tow Blind-dumb-broad-breeched beggars o’ battering-guns! My […]...
10. My Hundred Books A thousand books my library Contains; And all are primed, it seems to me With brains. Mine are so few I scratch in thought My head; For just a hundred of the lot I’ve read. A hundred books, but of the best, I can With wisdom savour and digest And scan. Yet when afar from […]...
11. Joliet ON the one hand the steel works. On the other hand the penitentiary. Sante Fé trains and Alton trains Between smokestacks on the west And gray walls on the east. And Lockport down the river. Part of the valley is God’s. And part is man’s. The river course laid out A thousand years ago. The […]...
12. Supernatural Songs I. Ribh at the Tomb of Baile and Aillinn Because you have found me in the pitch-dark night With open book you ask me what I do. Mark and digest my tale, carry it afar To those that never saw this tonsured head Nor heard this voice that ninety years have cracked. Of Baile and […]...
13. The Thousandth Man One man in a thousand, Solomon says, Will stick more close than a brother. And it’s worth while seeking him half your days If you find him before the other. Nine nundred and ninety-nine depend On what the world sees in you, But the Thousandth man will stand your friend With the whole round world […]...
14. Three Songs To The One Burden I The Roaring Tinker if you like, But Mannion is my name, And I beat up the common sort And think it is no shame. The common breeds the common, A lout begets a lout, So when I take on half a score I knock their heads about. From mountain to mountain ride the fierce […]...
15. FLOWER-SALUTE THIS nosegay, ’twas I dress’d it, Greets thee a thousand times! Oft stoop’d I, and caress’d it, Ah! full a thousand times, And ‘gainst my bosom press’d it A hundred thousand times! 1815.*...
16. Lord Roberts 1914 He passed in the very battle-smoke Of the war that he had descried. Three hundred mile of cannon spoke When the Master-Gunner died. He passed to the very sound of the guns; But, before his eye grew dim, He had seen the faces of the sons Whose sires had served with him, He had […]...
17. House TWO Swede families live downstairs and an Irish policeman upstairs, and an old soldier, Uncle Joe. Two Swede boys go upstairs and see Joe. His wife is dead, his only son is dead, and his two daughters in Missouri and Texas don’t want him around. The boys and Uncle Joe crack walnuts with a hammer […]...
18. From The Frontier Of Writing The tightness and the nilness round that space When the car stops in the road, the troops inspect Its make and number and, as one bends his face Towards your window, you catch sight of more On a hill beyond, eyeing with intent Down cradled guns that hold you under cover And everything is pure […]...
19. Four Songs Of Four Seasons I. WINTER IN NORTHUMBERLAND OUTSIDE the garden The wet skies harden; The gates are barred on The summer side: “Shut out the flower-time, Sunbeam and shower-time; Make way for our time,” Wild winds have cried. Green once and cheery, The woods, worn weary, Sigh as the dreary Weak sun goes home: A great wind grapples […]...
20. Songs For A Colored Singer I A washing hangs upon the line, but it’s not mine. None of the things that I can see belong to me. The neighbors got a radio with an aerial; we got a little portable. They got a lot of closet space; we got a suitcase. I say, “Le Roy, just how much are we […]...
21. Remembered Women FOR a woman’s face remembered as a spot of quick light on the flat land of dark night, For this memory of one mouth and a forehead they go on in the gray rain and the mud, they go on among the boots and guns. The horizon ahead is a thousand fang flashes, it is […]...
22. Graves I dreamed one man stood against a thousand, One man damned as a wrongheaded fool. One year and another he walked the streets, And a thousand shrugs and hoots Met him in the shoulders and mouths he passed. He died alone. And only the undertaker came to his funeral. Flowers grow over his grave anod […]...
23. Iron GUNS, Long, steel guns, Pointed from the war ships In the name of the war god. Straight, shining, polished guns, Clambered over with jackies in white blouses, Glory of tan faces, tousled hair, white teeth, Laughing lithe jackies in white blouses, Sitting on the guns singing war songs, war chanties. Shovels, Broad, iron shovels, Scooping […]...
24. The Narrow Way What thousands never knew the road! What thousands hate it when ’tis known! None but the chosen tribes of God Will seek or choose it for their own. A thousand ways in ruin end, One only leads to joys on high; By that my willing steps ascend, Pleased with a journey to the sky. No […]...
25. Young A thousand doors ago When I was a lonely kid In a big house with four Garages and it was summer As long as I could remember, I lay on the lawn at night, Clover wrinkling over me, The wise stars bedding over me, My mother’s window a funnel Of yellow heat running out, My […]...
26. Cheerfulness Taught By Reason I THINK we are too ready with complaint In this fair world of God’s. Had we no hope Indeed beyond the zenith and the slope Of yon gray blank of sky, we might grow faint To muse upon eternity’s constraint Round our aspirant souls; but since the scope Must widen early, is it well to […]...
27. The Ever-Patient Woman In the flowing sap In her growing fever Parting her veils Cracking out of her shells Sliding out of her skins The ever-patient woman Slowly Gives herself Life In her volcanoes In her orchards Seeking solidity and measure Clasping her most tender flesh Straining every fine-honed fiber The ever-patient woman Slowly Gives herself Light....
28. Agoraphobia My whole world is all you refuse: A black light, angelic and cold On the path to the orchard, Fox-runs and clouded lanes and the glitter of webbing, Little owls snagged in the fruit nets Out by the wire And the sense of another life, that persists When I go out into the yard And […]...
29. The Auction Sale Her little head just topped the window-sill; She even mounted on a stool, maybe; She pressed against the pane, as children will, And watched us playing, oh so wistfully! And then I missed her for a month or more, And idly thought: “She’s gone away, no doubt,” Until a hearse drew up beside the door. […]...
30. The Census-Taker I came an errand one cloud-blowing evening To a slab-built, black-paper-covered house Of one room and one window and one door, The only dwelling in a waste cut over A hundred square miles round it in the mountains: And that not dwelt in now by men or women. (It never had been dwelt in, though, […]...
31. The Primrose Upon this Primrose hill, Where, if Heav’n would distil A shower of rain, each several drop might go To his own primrose, and grow manna so; And where their form and their infinity Make a terrestrial Galaxy, As the small stars do in the sky: I walk to find a true Love; and I see […]...
32. Victory Stuff What d’ye think, lad; what d’ye think, As the roaring crowds go by? As the banners flare and the brasses blare And the great guns rend the sky? As the women laugh like they’d all gone mad, And the champagne glasses clink: Oh, you’re grippin’ me hand so tightly, lad, I’m a-wonderin’: what d’ye think? […]...
33. Three Songs Come unto these yellow sands, And then take hands: Court’sied when you have, and kiss’d, The wild waves whist Foot it featly here and there; And, sweet sprites, the burthen bear. Hark, hark! Bow, wow, The watch-dogs bark: Bow, wow. Hark, hark! I hear The strain of strutting chanticleer Cry, Cock-a-diddle-dow! from The Tempest Tell […]...
34. The Two Songs I heard an Angel Singing When the day was springing: “Mercy, pity, and peace, Are the world’s release.” So he sang all day Over the new-mown hay, Till the sun went down, And the haycocks looked brown. I heard a devil curse Over the heath and the furse: “Mercy vould be no more If there […]...
35. In Former Songs 1 IN former songs Pride have I sung, and Love, and passionate, joyful Life, But here I twine the strands of Patriotism and Death. And now, Life, Pride, Love, Patriotism and Death, To you, O FREEDOM, purport of all! (You that elude me most-refusing to be caught in songs of mine,) I offer all to […]...
36. Songs of Joy Sing out, my soul, thy songs of joy; Sing as a happy bird will sing Beneath a rainbow’s lovely arch In the spring. Think not of death in thy young days; Why shouldst thou that grim tyrant fear? And fear him not when thou art old, And he is near. Strive not for gold, for […]...
37. Three Songs LOVE, thou art best of Human Joys, Our chiefest Happiness below; All other Pleasures are but Toys, Musick without Thee is but Noise, And Beauty but an empty Show. Heav’n, who knew best what Man wou’d move, And raise his Thoughts above the Brute; Said, Let him Be, and let him Love; That must alone […]...
38. Graceland TOMB of a millionaire, A multi-millionaire, ladies and gentlemen, Place of the dead where they spend every year The usury of twenty-five thousand dollars For upkeep and flowers To keep fresh the memory of the dead. The merchant prince gone to dust Commanded in his written will Over the signed name of his last testament […]...
39. The Three Songs The poet sang of a battle-field Where doughty deeds were done, Where stout blows rang on helm and shield And a kingdom’s fate was spun With the scarlet thread of victory, And honor from death’s grim revelry Like a flame-red flower was won! So bravely he sang that all who heard With the sting of […]...
40. These Little Songs These little Songs, Found here and there, Floating in air By forest and lea, Or hill-side heather, In houses and throngs, Or down by the sea – Have come together, How, I can’t tell: But I know full well No witty goose-wing On an inkstand begot ’em; Remember each place And moment of grace, In […]...